Interview by Billy Amendola webpublished on moderndrummer.com in
2001.

TONY THOMPSON

Not many drummers dictated the
sound of the 80's like Chic's Tony Thompson. That big, huge drum sound
was everywhere: on classic recordings like Power Station's "Some Like
It Hot," "David Bowie's "Let's Dance," Madonna's "Like
A Virgin," Robert Palmer's "Addicted To Love"­ the list
goes on.

MD: What have you been up to lately?

Tony: I've been critiquing songwriters for a company
called Taxi. I'm basically a screener. If I find someone who's happening,
I pass it on to the A&R people. It's been a lot of fun. It's a few
days a week for a couple of hours, so I have plenty of time to do whatever
else I have to do.

I was living in England for a while, I lived in Spain.
I did the Power Station record Living In Fear with Bernard Edwards
before he passed away. We cut some tracks in LA, some in NY, but most of
it was done on the island of Capri in Italy. It started with the original
line up, but John Taylor had to bow out for personal reasons, so Bernard
played bass on all the tracks. The record came out in Europe, but the label
in the States ran into some problems so it was never released here. It's
available on various Web sites. I also did a record called Under The
One Sky with a band called Distance. The lead singer, Robert Hart,
was the singer for Bad Company. Speaking of Bad Company, I toured with
Paul Rodgers about two years ago.

MD: You also did a Nine Inch Nails record. How
did you hook up with Trent Reznor?

Tony: I did the album The Fragile. I was on
tour with Power Station, and I got a call from Trent and his people saying
they were fans of mine, and would I consider doing the album? At the time
I wasn't really familiar with the band and their work. But it turned out
the Power Station tour was ending, so I went back to New York, then to
New Orleans, and started to work with them. I did about eight tracks. Trent
was a very nice cat to work with.

MD: How were your tracks recorded?

Tony: I had no one else to play along with­no
human beings in the room, just drums and computers. It was very interesting.
I played all acoustic drums. I've always enjoyed playing like that. No
matter how you look at it, the machines can't mess up. You can't blame
anyone but yourself. I dig playing with sequences and loops. It's a lot
of fun. The time is there, so all you have to do is lock in and groove.

MD: Any other projects you're working on?

Tony: I've been working with the former guitarist
from Kiss, Bruce Kulick, on tribute records he's producing­bands
like Metallica and Aerosmith. Bruce has every artist under the sun, drummers
like Vinnie Colaiuta, Simon Phillips, and myself. He puts these amazing
players together, and teams up rhythm sections with people who never played
together before.

MD: Let's talk about that big drum sound you created
in the 80's.

Tony: All these years, people wanted to sample me.
Everyone always assumed that there was some kind of special knobs turned
when we did that first Power Station record. All it basically was, was
a brand-new Yamaha kit (which I still play) in a very live, brick, recording
studio in London called Mason Rouge. I hit the drums very hard. That's
it! [laughs] We did "Some Like It Hot," and everyone had all
these stories, saying all kinds of things, about tricks that were going
on. Samples weren't even around back then. So, bottom line, the sound came
from a good kit, hit hard, in a nice live room.

MD: Was this the same recording process for Robert
Palmer's "Addicted To Love"?

Tony: No. Out of all the recordings I've ever done,
that was the first time anyone ever spent time to get a drum sound like
that. We did "Addicted To Love" in a recording studio in the
Bahamas called Compass Point. At the time Robert lived across from
the studio. So Bernard Edwards, one of my favorite guitarists, Eddie Martinez,
keyboardist Jeff Bova, Andy Taylor, who also played guitar on that track
and me went down to do Robert's record and I remember my drums were set
up in the room, and there was a door that led to a hallway. The engineer,
Jason Casaro, took a tube the size of my bass drum and built this tunnel
from my bass drum all the way out into the hall and up the stairs. It was
this weird thing he hooked up. And it worked. The groove in the house was
so thick, and what am I playing? A simple, Boom-Bop-Tish-Bop-Boom-Bop.
It was unbelievable­I locked into that with everyone else swinging,
and it brought the walls down. That song was a masterpiece.

MD: How about David Bowie's "Let's Dance"?

Tony: That was recorded the same way as the Power
Station album. It's the way that I play. It's the power that I have, which
I really put an emphasis on growing up. My major influences as a kid were
Ginger Baker and John Bonham.

MD: Speaking of John Bonham, how did you feel
about playing with Led Zeppelin at Live Aid?

Tony: I was on the road at the time with Power Station
in Sarasota, Florida. I got a call from my road manager saying Jimmy Page
and Robert Plant were on the phone. I was like, 'Yeah, right.' [laughs]
And I hung up the phone. About a half hour later, my road manager calls
back again and says, 'Tony, don't hang up the phone. I have Robert and
Jimmy on a three-way call from Chicago, and they want to talk to you.'
I was like, Are you serious? So I talk to them, and it turned out
they were fans of my work, so they asked me if I would consider doing Live
Aid with them. They said they also asked Phil Collins, but he was on the
Concord flying back and forth. It turned out Power Station was also doing
Live Aid. We were to go on at around six, and then I would go out with
Zeppelin around eight.

So the day of Live Aid, I got to Philadelphia and
Jimmy, Robert, and Jonsey rented out a rehearsal room and we rehearsed.
I was glad we had that rehearsal. I grew up listening to Zeppelin. They
were my bible when I was a kid. Now, I assumed a song like "Rock &
Roll" was played a certain way. But when we started the song, Plant
said, "No, that's not it" and Jonesy said, "It doesn't go
like that." [laughs] Bonham had a way of playing that everyone thought
was straight. You'd think "Rock & Roll" is just a big 2 &
4, but it's not like that. It's more like a Texas shuffle. I got the chance
to actually play with the guys who wrote the song, who were there. Bonham
was just so good. You can't copy him.

Another one of my idols growing up was Tony Williams,
another guy you couldn't really copy. You could never anticipate what Tony
would play next. Some drummers you can hear where they're gonna go. Not
Tony. He would always throw you a curve. Another thing I dug about Tony,
which I also dug about a lot of British drummers, was that they played
more behind the beat. I noticed American drummers were more on top.
Still on tempo, but a little more ahead. Tony Williams had the ability
to play behind or on top of the beat at will. I always dug that, and tried
to emulate it.

MD: So growing up, you were mostly listening to
rock records?

Tony: I love funk, but my major influences were rock.
The reason I play drums is people like Ringo and The Beatles, Mitch Mitchell
and Jimi Hendrix, Ginger Baker and Cream. John Bonham and Led Zeppelin
blew me away. I played rock in neighborhood bands. I always liked and listened
to funk music, but I really got into it when I met Bernard Edwards and
Nile Rodgers. Prior to meeting them I was really into fusion. That
was my thing. I would go down to 7th Ave. South. That was a club in New
York City that The Brecker Brothersused to own. I would see Chick
Corea with Steve Gadd. I remember seeing Return To Forever. I saw Billy
Cobham for the first time­and saw God. When they broke into "The
Inner Mounting Flame," it was the most awesome performance I've ever
seen in my life. My God, it's still embedded in my soul seeing him play
like that. To have that command and power plus his chops were just super-human.
Before that, I'd never seen anyone like Billy Cobham.

MD: Was this around the time you met Narada Michael
Walden?

Tony: I met Narada shortly after. He became my drum
teacher and friend. He would pick me up at my house in Queens, New York
every morning and we would go over his house, also in Queens, and we would
meditate and then play drums. The thing I liked about Narada as a teacher
was that he would never show me drum things. He wouldn't sit and play and
say, "Copy this." He would play keyboards and I would
play drums. He would analyze my playing, my feel, from that aspect. It
was a different way to learn. It was great. It was an invaluable experience.
He also taught Omar Hakim. I would see Omar when I was leaving. Narada
was a great teacher and friend. Still is.

MD: So with all this rock and fusion influence,
how did you end up in Chic, one of the biggest dance bands of all time?

Tony: When I met Nile Rodgers, I was playing in this
band with a lead singer who was like a Persian Tom Jones. The band was
looking for a guitar player, and Nile came down. He didn't join the band,
but he liked my playing and he kept my number. Months later, I got a call
from Nile saying he was starting a band with Bernard Edwards. So I met
them at this high school that Bernard's uncle or somebody worked at. He
would slip them the key so we could practice after school hours. This was
the first time I had met Bernard, and that was the beginning of Chic.

We actually started as a rock band. But at the time,
no one would hear of it­"Yeah, right, three brothers playing rock
'n' roll. That's not gonna happen." [laughs] So Bernard and Nile came
up with the whole disco thing. I didn't even know what disco was.
It was very new to the scene. We pressed "Dance, Dance, Dance"
without a record deal. Back then you could go over to a hot club, ask the
DJ to play it, and see the results­which is what we did. And people
just freaked. From there we signed to Atlantic.

MD: "Le Freak," one of Chic's many hits,
became Atlantic Records' biggest-selling single of all time.

Tony: Yeah. I can recall when I first joined Chic.
Nile didn't like what I was playing. He felt I played way too much. Remember,
I was into fusion at the time, you know, Billy Cobham. [laughs] So I would
show up with all these drums and cymbals, showing my chops. I thought I
was going to put a move on these guys. Check my shit. [laughs] Meanwhile,
it had nothing to do with what they wanted to do. Nile was like, "Why
you need all those cymbals and stuff?" He would tell Bernard 'the
brother plays way too much.' So Bernard took me under his wing. He would
talk to me: "Get rid of all that shit. Just keep a bass drum, snare,
and hi-hat. When you master that, then maybe I'll add another cymbal or
drum." So I was spoon-fed my kit. [laughs] But It worked. It's amazing
how creative you get from boredom. You come up with all these different
things. Nile and Bernard saw a lot of things in me I didn't see in myself.
They helped me immensely in learning to groove. They were the groove kings.
I really miss Bernard.

MD: Any memories of Madonna's record Like A
Virgin?

Tony: Nile produced that. Madonna was great to work
with. She was a lot of fun. I've really been blessed; I've played with
just about everybody.